Tissue-specific transcriptomics reveals spermidine protects rice roots from salt stress. Tissue-specific transcriptomics reveals spermidine protects rice roots from salt stress by preventing oxidation and maintaining Na+ homeostasis

As the most important crop in the world, the growth of rice was greatly affected by soil salinization. Though the low-molecular polyamine spermidine presents the potential to relieve rice from salt stress, the cause of this phenomenon was less studied. To do that, we built up tissue-specific transcriptomics to study the response of rice roots to spermidine, through assembling the reference genome from RNA sequencing data. The precise annotation of the genome drives us to explore the transcriptome discrimination between different treatments, and it was found that the anti-oxidation and salt stress pathways were affected by spermidine. We, therefore, investigated the cause of these pathways and realized some of the transcription factors were potentially activated by spermidine. Furthermore, the physiological experiments validated the activation of anti-oxidative related enzymes, and Na+ homeostasis induced by spermidine. This study would push forward the understanding of chemical regulation based on transcriptome data even the reference genome was not sequenced, which would support the studies on rice growth under different stresses and treatments.